this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Pay raise means jack all for ordinary people. Our buying power went down a lot more than 24%.
This does seem to be adjusting for inflation; according to one of the sources they cited:
That said I think there's some problems with how inflation is calculated, and the implications of the distribution of total ownership of wealth isn't really mitigated by increasing affordability of consumer goods.
So we should be paid what, 3x more? Or am I too reductive? I’m trying to understand how much we SHOULD be getting then (in 2020 btw), and now more actually, as shit got expensive af thru Covid and is still lingering today.
Dunno, not sure there's a way to conclusively pick an amount that's "fair" since any metrics for that are arbitrary. Just going by productivity vs wages and the premise that what people were paid in 1979 was what they "should" be paid given that ratio, you could say 3x, but there's a lot of assumptions there. To me the bigger story seems to be the ongoing trend of how capital keeps accumulating capital, and the share of the pie owned by regular people continues to decrease regardless of their contributions, and what that might mean for our future.
Existential crisis: Activated